Energy · Profile from Energy Research Companion
Sun King
The off-grid solar company that began in 2008 as Greenlight Planet, a start-up founded by students from the University of Illinois selling a durable solar lantern called the "Sun King", and that by the mid-2020s had become the largest pay-as-you-go (PAYGo) solar business in Africa and Asia by most counts. It designs lanterns and solar home systems, has them made under contract (mostly in China), sells them through tens of thousands of commissioned agents, and finances most sales on its "EasyBuy" plan: a deposit, then small daily or weekly mobile-money payments for about a year, with the device locking if the customer stops paying. Its decisive innovation was not the lantern but the funding: it moved from dollar equity and dollar debt to local-currency debt — a ~$75m Kenyan-shilling facility (2021), a ~$130m Kenyan-shilling securitisation (closed 2023, reported), an ~$80m naira facility with IFC and Stanbic IBTC in Nigeria (2024–25), and a ~$156m (~KES 20.1bn) Kenyan securitisation in 2025 that was reported as the largest securitisation in sub-Saharan Africa outside South Africa. Sun King says it has extended ~$1.2bn of credit to customers (reported, 2025) and reached tens of millions of people; those reach figures are company claims, not audited counts.
At a glance
- Founded
- 2008 (reported; some sources give 2007 for first work), as Greenlight Planet Inc., by Patrick Walsh, Anish Thakkar and Tom Roemer (reported, verify roles); first products sold in rural India
- Headquarters
- Operating headquarters in Nairobi, Kenya (reported); group holding and investor entities abroad (verify domicile)
- Ownership / structure
- Private, venture- and growth-equity-backed; investors reported to include BeyondNetZero (General Atlantic's climate venture), M&G Catalyst, Arch Emerging Markets Partners, LeapFrog Investments and earlier impact investors (reported)
- Leadership (2026)
- Co-founders Patrick Walsh and Anish Thakkar remain the public faces of the company (reported; verify current titles — CEO role has been reported for both at different times)
- Segment
- Off-grid and energy access: solar lanterns, solar home systems (SHS), TVs and appliances, phones and other financed products; PAYGo consumer credit
- Markets (2026)
- Kenya, Nigeria, Uganda, Tanzania, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique, the DRC, francophone West Africa (incl. Togo, Benin and Côte d'Ivoire) and India, among others (reported, verify current list)
- Scale
- Company claims: products reaching tens of millions of people (reported figures of 20m–40m+ people vary by year and definition — verify); ~$1.2bn of customer loans extended across Africa (reported, May 2025); Nigeria sales reported at ~75,000 kits a month (reported, 2025, verify). No audited revenue or customer count is public
- Capital raised
- ~$260m round (announced Apr 2022, called Series D, led by BeyondNetZero), extended to ~$330m with ~$70m led by LeapFrog (Dec 2022) (reported); local-currency debt of ~$450m+ across Kenya, Nigeria and Tanzania by 2025 (reported)
- Signature moves (incl. failures)
- Founding and the Sun King lantern (2008); the India agent network and the long Asia struggle (2010s); EasyBuy PAYGo in East Africa (from ~2015); rename from Greenlight Planet to Sun King (~2021–22, verify); the ~$330m 2022 equity round; the naira collapse and the dollar-funding trap (2023–24, shock); the first Kenyan-shilling securitisation (2023); the IFC–Stanbic naira facility (2024–25); the ~$156m Kenyan securitisation (2025)
9 strategic moves analysed
Each one gets a full strategy file in the companion: context, the decision, the financing, what happened, and the lesson.
2008
Greenlight Planet Founding and the Sun King Lantern
Founding / product bet
2010
India Agent Network and the Asia Market
Market entry and distribution build-out (partial failure as a second growth engine)
2015
EasyBuy PAYGo Launch in East Africa
Strategy pivot / technology bet (from cash sales to consumer credit)
2021
Kenya Local Currency Facility and Rename
Financing (local-currency debt) and corporate rebrand
2022
Series D 260m Round and 330m Extension
Financing (growth equity)
2023
First Kenya Shilling Securitisation
Financing (securitisation of PAYGo receivables)
2023
Naira Devaluation and the Dollar Funding Trap
Currency shock / exposure (failure of dollar funding in a local-currency market)
2025
KES 20bn Securitisation
Financing (second Kenyan-shilling securitisation)
2025
Nigeria Naira Facility with IFC and Stanbic
Financing (local-currency debt facility)